


A Slightly Bigger Family

by agentx13 (rebelle_elle)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, sharon carter week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 03:09:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16297076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelle_elle/pseuds/agentx13
Summary: Sharon is still a fugitive. When she ducks into a hotel room, she finds an unexpected guest.





	A Slightly Bigger Family

**Author's Note:**

> Second summary I've written in a week that sounds like a porn setup. I'm curse. There is no porn. I'm so sorry.

Sharon Carter and Tony Stark aren’t close. They have no reason to be. Sharon grew up immersed in the Howling Commandos, their lore and their legacies. Tony grew up immersed in a need for his father’s approval that his father withheld until too late. Sharon grew up loved and supported by the Commandos, sitting on their knee to hear their stories, taken out for celebratory pizza after victories both big and small. Tony grew up isolated and alone, lashing out as he tried to earn his father’s attention since he knew he couldn’t earn his father’s love.

Their paths cross. Their world is too small for their paths to do otherwise. It isn’t at Peggy’s funeral. Tony isn’t there. Tony’s missed all of the Commandos’ funerals, but to be fair, Sharon had missed his parents’ funeral.

No, they meet in the midst of an attack, and they work together only too briefly, a few words spoken here and there before they part again.

Sharon thinks it’s the last time she’ll see him. She sees no reason she would ever see him again. She’s a fugitive now. A man like Tony Stark has other things to concern himself with, like his dispute with Steve, his work with the Avengers. He wouldn’t remember her anyway. Whatever falling out Peggy and Howard happened when he was young, entirely before her time. She only knows about it because the Commandos would talk about Howard sometimes. Not in a nice way.

So she’s surprised when she lets herself into her hotel room, and her giant yawn is interrupted by Tony Stark’s unmistakable voice saying, “Took you long enough.”

Her gun is aimed at his head in a heartbeat. His hands go up; her gun flies out of her hand toward him. She doesn’t even see how he did it. The gun it aimed at the ceiling; she keeps her hands visible in front of her regardless.

They watch each other across the dimly lit room. Even with her gun in his hand, both of his hands are raised. He’s moved a chair to face the door, and he’s sitting in it like he’s been watching the door, waiting for her.

Slowly, she closes the door behind her with her foot. He doesn’t move the gun, so she cautiously, slowly latches it in case there are people in the hall waiting to storm in.

“No one’s with me,” he says.

She ignores his words and turns on the light, checking the former shadows for signs of more people. As far as she can tell, they’re alone. “It appears you have me at a disadvantage.”

He ignores her words. “Interesting tidbit,” he announces. “Did you know we’re related?”

“Yeah. Commando legacies tend to consider themselves family. Did you just realize that?” She’s not sure if she’s asking if he’s realized about the Commando family or if he’s realized that he’s descended from a Commando. Or at least, descended from part of the Commando family.

“But you’re with Steve.” His tone is accusing. There’s a sense of betrayal to it.

She stares at him.

He stares back, and neither of them move.

“What’s this about?” she asks at last.

“You know where he is,” he tells her.

“You’re welcome to try and torture it out of me.” She won’t break. Even if he tried torturing her, which he won’t. She might not know him well, but she knows he’s not up to that.

He shakes his head. “No. Just-”

She waits in the silence that follows.

“My dad.” He starts forward, hands on his knees. He doesn’t let go of the gun. “Did you know my dad?”

She shrugs. “Kind of.”

He watches her, hungry to know more, but she won’t give it to him. Reluctantly, he goes on. “My dad and mom. Only children. Mom didn’t have any family. Dad’s family is all gone.”

She wonders if there’s a point to this. And then something else occurs to her. “How did you get here so fast? I just checked in.”

He digs his phone out of his pocket with his free hand. “I hacked into the computer. Told the system to give you this room. I wasn’t going to chase you down to another room. I’ve already eaten half the minibar. I’ve been here for hours.”

She doesn’t tell him about her transportation problems. She goes over to the minibar to see for herself and finds it almost empty. She turns an accusatory glare at him.

“I didn’t think you’d take this long,” he admitted, ignoring the glare. “So all the Commando people are family, huh? Family like we’re family?” He waves the gun between them, not looking at it.

She’s closer to the Commando family, she thinks. She’s grown up with them. Stark is just someone on a pedestal, or the news, in a magazine, or sitting in a dark hotel room racking up a fortune in minibar snacks. “Kind of. Not by blood. But by everything else.”

There’s there barest of pauses. In his genius-minded head, it probably feels longer. “So how come I don’t know about them? Do we have reunions? Did my invitation get lost in the mail?”

She leans against the minibar and crosses her arms. “Your father demanded that your family be left out of it. He was worried what impact we might have on you.”

He looks disbelieving, but also like he might laugh. It comes out as a hybrid, a choked cough.

“He didn’t come from the same background as a lot of them,” she explains, “and he tended to think he was right about everything. He didn’t always take opposing viewpoints well. Peggy stuck it out, because of SHIELD, and because she saw more of him than they did. But by the time I was born, they already weren’t getting along. I only saw him when Aunt Peggy took me to SHIELD, but she tended to keep me away from him. I don’t think he minded me, but I think that he rubbed so many people the wrong way after a while that Peggy worried he’d drive someone else away or something.” Or that she’d kick him in the shin for saying something mean. She’d done that to one of her teachers once.

Tension in Tony’s shoulders goes slack, and he’s silent. The lines in his face are deeper than when she’d last seen him. “That sounds about right,” he says quietly.

She almost feels bad enough to give him something out of the minibar, but she doubts she can afford it. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m getting married.”

“Congratulations?” She still isn’t sure what that has to do with her. Why he, the red-headed stepchild of the US government, is interacting with a fugitive nobody.

“I’ve been thinking about family.”

She starts to get a sinking feeling.

“Pep has some family. Me? No one.”

Sharon frowns at him. Him. Pepper. Family… “You want family to be in your wedding?”

“What? No. I’ve got Rhodey.” He looks at her like _she’s_ the one being absurd. “I just thought… It’s weird, right? That you’re the closest thing I have to family.” He pauses. “What about your family? Got any? Outside of the Commandos?”

There’s a long pause. She shakes her head.

Tony nods, staring into the distance. Thinking of her family, thinking of his, thinking of the family they share that existed for so long without him, without him even knowing about it.

“Anyway,” he says, rousing himself, “it occurred to me. I don’t have a lot of family. Any family.” He hesitates. He looks conscientious. It’s a better look than the arrogant billionaire.

And then she knows. She knows why he’s here. “Do you- do you want to join the Commandos? I mean, the Commando family?”

“Since you’re asking.” The words spill out so fast they’re almost on top of each other. “So what does that make us? Cousins? Second cousins?”

Holy crap. If he’s trying to help her pursuers get inside her head, he’s doing a good job. She never could have seen this coming. “Cousins,” she says, still trying to figure out what, exactly, is going on. She gets that he wants family, that he feels lonely without them. But this is happening so fast it doesn’t feel real.

“Great.” He hops to his feet. “We should do Christmas sometime.” He’s in front of her in no time, putting his arms out as if for a hug, then stepping back and offering her a hand to shake, then changing the gesture into an awkward fist bump.

Her hand ends up waving around in the air as she tries to keep up. She weakly reciprocates the fist bump before letting her hand fall. “You not ratting me out to the feds is compensation enough.”

“Oh. Well. Yeah. We’re family now. Not that I would have anyway. Even if you _are_ with Steve.” Belatedly, he realizes he’s still holding her gun in one Iron-Man-tech-covered hand. He hands it over. “I should… go,” he says. “Very busy.”

But not so busy that he couldn’t sit in the dark, waiting for her to come back, she thinks. He’s so desperate for a family, but doesn’t want to _seem_ as if he’s desperate. She can understand that. It’s not like she has family outside of the Commandos anymore.

“We should catch up,” he continues. He breezes past her.

He’s got his hand on the door when she says, “March.”

He stops and turns toward her.

“Family reunion’s in March. I’ll get you details. I can’t go, but maybe you can take Pepper.”

He watches her intensely for a moment, and then he grins. He turns his face to hide it. “Yeah. She’d like that,” he says. “Thanks, cuz.”

And then he’s gone, leaving her alone. But, she thinks, with a slightly bigger family.


End file.
